Author: Hanna Stasiuk

Some weeks ago we wrote about unexpected applications of Flowserve equipment. It’s broadly used for snow producing at ski resorts and even at the Olympics in Pyongyang. This week we come back to the surprising investments of corporations.

BASF. The giant of chemical industry does its best to stay in avant-garde. BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH keeps growing and creating successful collaborations with talented startups and big 3D-printing companies.

2012-2013, a new division engaged in materials and additives production for 3d-printing was formed in corporation. It became truly serious and large-scaled by mid-2017. Now it has a well-developed material production, has a range of customers. The company has already been even a general sponsor of annual conference AMUG. Among the industries targeted are aerospace, automotive, and consumer goods production.

In November, BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of BASF New Business GmbH dedicated to additive manufacturing, announced that it was entering into a strategic alliance with German technology startup BigRep for developing industrial 3D printing solutions, including 3D printers and materials. This can be the way for brand-new BASF materials, such as plastic and metal filaments, photopolymers, to meet printers, that are big enough to reach the new production level. The most recent inventions let manufacturers produce the most complicated details with individual designs, that speeds up prototyping, development and final production. Meanwhile, the costs don’t grow a lot.

It doesn’t matter, if you produce oil, baby furniture or even aerospace ships, BASF products let you stay ahead and get more effectiveness day by day!

We love sunlight. A great amount of energy streams from the sky, we try to catch it and convert into something. However, we are to recognize that at the current moment it’s not that much cost-effective to use solar power. Our company doesn’t deal with solar plants mainly for the reason that we still don’t know, how to make it cost-effective and profitable for our customers. Meanwhile, german scientists at the Aerospace centre announced success of Contisol testing. The one is a solar reactor that takes advantage of concentrated solar power in order to run day and night.

Concentrated solar power involves the use of mirrors or lenses to redirect and concentrate a large area of sunlight, and by extension solar thermal energy, onto a small area. Rather than converting solar power directly into electricity, however, Contisol directs concentrated solar power into a reactor with multiple channels.

Meanwhile into reactor half of these channels are used to catalyze reaction of hydrogen production using solar power, while the other half use solar energy to heat air to temperatures greater than 1,000oC, the products of which are stored as thermal energy. During the night, when solar energy is no longer available, the stored energy from the heated channels is redirected to the other channels, where the production of hydrogen can continue.

Therefore Contisol builds two reactors together, one where sunlight is directly doing chemical processing. The other side for storing energy. This lets the plant to solve simultaneously two important issues. 1) The production doesn’t ceases, when the sun sets. 2) nuclear reaction operates effectively in stable and safe environment.

Although it’s clear that such experiments are still only scientists deal and they are far from commercial use and significant figures of several MW power production, it’s such a pleasure to realize that we are getting closer to conquesting one of the most clean and reliable energy sources.

The customers used to recognize Flowserve as an important manufacturer of high-quality equipment for oil and gas, power and chemical industries. Meanwhile, the company integrates its products into snow-making systems worldwide since early 1980-s.
Flowserve vertical turbine double casing pumps (VPC) and vertical turbine wet-pit pumps (VTP) along with seal systems and digital technologies are widely used in snow-making systems at ski resorts and winter sports venues around the world. These pumps provide a possibility to design a flow control station that keeps constant discharge pressure, without fluctuation, for optimum snow-making results. At the same time, Flowserve vertical turbine pumps are the preferred choice in a business where performance on-demand is critical to success.
The snow-making system at PyeongChang includes more than 20 Flowserve vertical turbine high-pressure pumps, which pull the large amounts of water into the system that is needed to make snow. The company is proud of taking part into such a great event that makes the world better.
We congratulate our partners and as official distributors we are glad to implement projects of any difficulty, based on the high-quality reliable Flowserve equipment.